As to your questions, I don’t know the answers to most of them, but I specified Western not because I think the West has a monopoly on bigotry, but because it is the only culture I live in, and therefore the only one I can speak on with any authority. Other culture-groups have their own problems, but I don’t know what they are. It was not so much wanting to castigate the West, in particular, as much as wanting to acknowledge that my thinking and my knowledge is limited and is influenced by this particular culture-group.

(One of the first steps in dismantling any marginalization, as a person who benefits from the oppression of others, is simply to acknowledge it. We privileged folk tend to think that how and what we think is universal, when it isn’t. I want to point out that the way we in the West think about relationships and sexuality are not universal truths, but culturally influenced memes.)

But one of the things I see going on with these two — in addition to the misgendering, which is just the cherry on the cake of the mockery of a trail, the jail time, the public humiliation, the sentence, the insulting pardon, and so on — is that in an effort to correct the misgendering of Tiwonge, Steven’s sexuality is being denied.

Now, I don’t know how he identifies. I don’t know how he would identify in his own terms, if he were free to do so in his own culture. From the few comments from him that I’ve read, in Western parlance he would likely identify as gay (again, given that gay men can fall in love with a woman), or queer (or, possibly, asexual, depending on how he meant “I have never had sexual feelings for ladies”). But just as we are assigning “trans” to Tiwonge (whose womanhood, as I said, is not being questioned at all by that statement), because that best matches our Western understanding, we should continue to respect our best, limited, understanding of Steven’s orientation. And to my mind, that means that calling him part of a “straight couple” is offensive.

Again, I’m not saying I know what he wants. Maybe he’d love to be seen as part of a straight couple. Maybe he just wants all of us Western pontificators to shut up and leave him alone (which is what I’d place money on). But just as I’m going to continue to speak up to correct the misgendering of Tiwonge rampant in mainstream and alternative media and among my acquaintances, I’m not going to be silenced when I see what looks like — on the part of Westerners, to my Western understanding, which I fully acknowledge to be potentially erroneous in his own mind and culture — to be erasure of Steven’s orientation. As you say, haven’t they been through enough already?

And yes, just like it matters to all trans women how Tiwonge is being talked about, whether or not she identifies as trans (or intersex, or a woman according to her own culture) because she is understood by Western culture to be trans (her misgendering would be offensive and insulting to her regardless), I think it matters to queer people, especially nonmonosexual queer people or queer people in woman/man relationships, how we talk about Steven and his relationship, given what we have heard about his sexuality.

Unlike with Tiwonge, there isn’t an easy fix to Steven’s problem, because we don’t have the words yet — which is what I was trying to talk about in this post.

Is that — trying to talk about this small thing, that matters to queer people and might matter to Steven, when what the two of them have been through is so much worse — gross? Well, it might be. I try to balance topical relevance with avoiding vulture-syndrome, and though I try to err on the side of avoidance, I know I can fail. Perhaps, as you say, I failed with this one.

What I am trying to do is not make it about me-me-me (and to the extent that it is so is a failure of my writing, and I own that), but about the language we regularly use and how to make it most respectful for all persons. For Tiwonge and Steven, yes, and particularly Steven, (although as I said on Twitter, they have far bigger concerns, and I doubt they care: we’re talking about Western language, here, after all), and for me, yes, as a queer person in a woman/man relationship, but also for other queer/bisexual people, who are made invisible by the gay couple/straight couple language we use.

And you could argue that that’s not worthy of my or anyone else’s time, but then you’d be working from the Derailing For Dummies crib notes, and I don’t think that’s your intent.

Partner, couple, significant other… all of these also imply only two people in a committed relationship- what about people who love more than one? I have many friends who are in triads, quads, and more, and, when thinking about it, those relationships have no “gender markers”. hmmm…